The rape and murder of a doctor in India sparks outrage

THERE WERE According to the National Crime Registry, nearly 32,000 rapes were reported in India in 2022, the latest year for which data is publicly available. This number greatly underestimates how widespread sexual violence is in the country. Most incidents are never reported. Those that are reported rarely make the news.

Every now and then, a particularly gruesome case sparks nationwide outrage. This was the case in 2012, when a 23-year-old student was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi and then left to die on the side of the road. She later succumbed to her injuries. Or in 2020, when a 19-year-old Dalit farm worker in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was raped by a group of men from the upper castes of her village. She, too, died.

And that's how it was in recent weeks, after the rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor during her night shift at a hospital in Calcutta, the capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Across the country, women took to the streets and demanded protection from violence and equal rights in the workplace and in public life. Doctors went on strike for better working conditions. The outrage is important, says Vrinda Grover, a lawyer and activist: “It shows that this is wrong and that we as a society will not tolerate this violence.”

Yet outrage has done little to improve the lives of Indian women in recent years. The number of reported rapes in the country was higher in 2022 than it was a decade earlier. That may be due to a greater willingness to report such crimes, but it is hardly a sign that the risk of falling victim to one has gone down. Public spaces still belong firmly to men, and women are expected to fend for themselves when they leave the narrow confines of their homes (which are often far from safe, too).

One reason is that the government does not enforce its own laws. The case in Kolkata, for example, might have been prevented if the doctor had had access to a safe rest room, as India's occupational health and safety regulations already require. And while high-profile cases like the one in 2012 have been expedited by special courts, the legal process for most victims remains painfully slow and unlikely to succeed, with only about a quarter of cases that go to court ending in a conviction.

Meanwhile, violence against women is still widely seen as acceptable. Nearly half of Indians surveyed by the government between 2019 and 2021 – both men and women – said that it is sometimes justified for a husband to beat his wife when she commits offenses such as “disrespecting” his parents or going out without their permission. Marital rape is not a crime.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi alluded to the issue of violence against women in his Independence Day speech on August 15, without specifically mentioning the Kolkata case. His main recommendation was to “spread fear” through tougher punishments. Rekha Sharma, chairperson of the National Commission for Women under Modi's previous government, blamed the West Bengal government, which is run by an opposition party. She had earlier said that highlighting the issue of sexual violence was “defaming” the country. India is not the only country that needs to combat violence against women. But politicians remain unwilling to curb it. ■

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